The Problem with Spirits in Legend of Korra

Wan Shi Tong was right oop.

MY BOOK:

0:00 Intro
1:11 Spirits in ATLA
10:55 Spirits in Korra

[crona]

I also loved how in the show, Koh the face stealer isn’t described as “evil”, he’s simply described as “dangerous”.

[dragonice]

I saw a comment about the moon and ocean spirits a while back that made me appreciate the scene even more. The moon is "pull", and the ocean is "push". When the moon spirit is gone and Aang basically lets the ocean spirit run wild, all of its attacks are "push". It's such a small detail but it shows the spirits have a domain they fit into.

[kurosan]

It's kinda funny how a show with more "adult" characters has an immature take on spirits, while the show where all the main characters are kids have a more nuanced take on spirits.

[shaggyrogers]

Imagine if instead of being plain evil, Vaatu appeared evil when imbalanced because he is a being that acts on pure impulse alone, he represents chaos and passion unrestrained
But at the same time, when Raava is imbalanced, she becomes obsesed with order, completely rejecting emotion and change. She represents knowledge and serenity, but taken to an extreme leads her to inaction.

[morganmccool]

The "dilemma" of whether or not to let the spirts co-exist with humans again was so absurd to me. You really want Koh the face stealer walking around republic city? We're on the fence about that? How about that scorpion spirit with a star that lures people close so it can grab them and take them to a literal eternal hell in the spirit world. Or the goat spirit that disfigures people for fun.
Guess we got lucky that the spirts that crossed were all the cute animal ones and not the nightmare monsters.

[maybe]

The spirits designs are some of the best of all medias. The painted lady is just BEYOND gorgeous.

[mardy]

First time watching Korra I remember not trusting Rava. Her story seemed so cookie cutter purity and goodness that it felt like she was trying to deceive Wan. And I was hoping it would lead to us finding out that she was just trying to give Vaatu a bad name by only presenting her half, and the only way to have a balanced view was to hear them both out or something. But nope.

[QueenMariposa]

I thought there'd be a twist that neither Ravaa or Vaatu were good or evil. Maybe Ravaa went around oppressing people in the name of peace and order, while Vaatu allowed everyone unchecked freedom even if it led to destruction and harm. Avatar Wan would convince the two to coexist instead of fighting for control

[hoykfnvnnesnxnnensncjforkx]

I hate having random airbenders come back it makes the scar on the world from the war to just kinda be fixed out of no where. It takes away from what happened

[ThePonderer]

For lack of a better word, LoK’s spirits were all just way too human.
I never liked the idea personifying “chaos” and “balance” as such clear good and evil, nor have I ever liked the idea of the Avatar as a Spirit/Human hybrid.

I’ve really soured on the Wan episodes over the years because they cement the history of the setting and the Avatar as a spiritual concept in a way that I think undermines the mystique of the original series.

[shealupkes]

Aang:"I respect all spirits"
Vaatu:"even me?"
Korra:"not you you're black!"

[coreywigent]

The spirit portals where you can literally walk into the spirit world is one of the dumbest things in korra

[Potato]

I also don't like how the spirits can just be easily beaten with waterbending even though Kuruk lived a life of pain and suffering trying to keep them at bay

[Lanoira]

I was so excited when LoK described Raava and Vaatu as "Order" and "Chaos" thinking they were going to do a proper balance of Order and Chaos subplot and have Korra have to realize Rava isn't goodness personified and Vaatu isn't evil, they just both think the world would be better without the other, and Korra would have to make peace between them to restore the balance the first Avatar failed to understand. It would've made Unalock such a good parallel, falling for the same thing Wan did but with Vaatu, believing Raava's reign was making the world worse, segregating the world between spirits and humans, and Raava would never coexist with Vaatu. Meanwhile Raava is trying to convince Korra of the same thing from the other direction, and having Korra realize that and realize the past can't guide her this time because the past didn't work, and her having to figure out on her own that Vaatu has their own place in the world that they need to fill right alongside Raava.

And then the ending came and it was literally just good kite kills evil kite. 🙄

[ZekeRaiden]

As a Christian myself, I also absolutely loathed the of LoK. It was genuinely _beautiful_ that AtLA articulated both a non-Westernized values-system _and_ a genuinely mysterious, _spiritual_ world completely outside of human understandings. LoK trashed that. (Now, that doesn't mean you _can't_ tell a great good-vs-evil story--you absolutely can. They just tried to shoehorn a very basic, poorly-written one into a world that neither needed nor wanted it.) Which is really quite a shame, especially since the Avatar Wan episodes are incredibly beautiful stylistically.

One of my favorite things about Aang's run actually came up, not in the show proper, but in the Nickelodeon web game, Escape from the Spirit World, which connected Book II: Earth and Book III: Fire, while Aang was recovering from the wound he received in the caves beneath Ba Sing Se. He reconnects with his four previous lives (including Kuruk), and specifically has an important philosophical conversation with Yangchen, the previous Air Nomad Avatar. He tells her that, having observed the three lives between Yangchen and himself, he's learned that every Avatar lifetime is full of mistakes, foibles, good intentions that lead to bad outcomes, etc. But he has also learned that the Avatar Spirit _is a spirit._ As you say, it's a spirit driven by its own interests and desires and needs. So he asks: Why doesn't the Avatar just rule the world, as an all-powerful spirit that can't die or age?

And Yangchen's answer is truly beautiful. "I don't think [it would be better if the Avatar were an all-powerful spirit that never died.] The Avatar must be compassionate toward all people, and the only way to do that is to live with them. The Avatar must experience sadness, anger, joy, and happiness. By feeling all these emotions, it helps you to understand how precious life is, so you will do anything to protect it. If you were an all-powerful spirit living on the top of some mountain, you wouldn't have much in common with an ordinary person. So the Avatar continues to take human rebirth. And with each life, learns what it means to be human."

Note: continues to _take_ human rebirth. Yangchen strongly implies that the Avatar Spirit _could_ choose to be a pure spirit, if it wished to, _but it doesn't._ It wants to know what it means to be human, and it wants to experience that through being connected to the land--all of the land, in every corner of the world.

Under your analysis, each spirit has something it is connected to, usually in a pretty physical sense (a specific forest, a specific river, the whole Ocean, the Moon, etc.) but sometimes in a more abstract sense (Wan Shi Tong and knowledge). This begs the question: _What is the Avatar the Spirit of?_ It's clearly a spirit, and it clearly chooses to incarnate as human beings in order to connect with life, _all_ life, everywhere in the world. Every Avatar starts from a particular place, but must grow from that context to learn all four elements, to connect with many different cultures, to both protect the world and nurture it. But what sort of spirit could want such a connection--not just to a single forest or river or even the ocean in general, but to the entire world? Well...how about the Spirit of the World itself? And through this, we see a beautiful piece of genuine Buddhist philosophy: that loving-kindness is the necessary result of freeing yourself from petty attachment and grasping, something each Avatar _must_ learn to do in order to master their greatest strengths and aid and protect those they care about (which, when their training is complete, should mean "all people and spirits collectively.") The Spirit of the World, unlike the _genii locorum_ of individual places or things (even things as great as the whole ocean!), would care about _all_ of the world, and everything in it--because that's where its priorities lie.

Finally, Avatars that are lax in their duties (like Kuruk and, to an extent, Roku) tend to _permit_ serious problems to arise in the world, often ones that their later incarnations must struggle greatly against; Avatars that are too zealous in their duties (like Kyoshi) tend to personally _create_ problems, often with the same result. Avatars out of balance. Aang has to learn, not just how to fix the problems the world is facing, but how to find balance within himself, so that he can prepare a world for the _next_ Avatar that has neither excessive Yin nor excessive Yang, neither pushed nor pulled out of place. The World-Spirit must seek balance, which means leaving well enough alone when that is the correct choice, and taking decisive action when _that_ is the correct choice. It's terribly hard! Most Avatars we've seen screwed up at least once in that regard. But every rebirth is a new chance to restore balance. To try again--and build something better.

[LordZemosa]

Honestly the spirit world in Korra would make for a pretty poor afterlife, considering that you can't even have the freedom of having a bad day, without risking the world collapsing under your emotions and causing a nightmare

[tacticstories]

I remember watching season 2. And after seeing Vaatu locked away, I expected something happening like, people starting to lose the ability to feel anger, or people being way too relaxed during a life or death situation. And then realisng that Vaatu needs to be free. But then he was locked away and it didn‘t make any difference. Like he literally isn‘t needed at all. Goes against the message.

[parkerdixon-word]

Korra is general was missing a lot of Last Airbender's "Secret Sauce": It felt like a series that didn't really grasp any of the original's *subtleties* unless they were explained directly.
The different elements didn't feel like they had unique philosophies, styles, and themes tied to them anymore, like they were no longer *spiritual* or *thematic* but simply things that existed. Airbending fared a bit better than the other 3, because the airbenders got so much focus in the latter half of the series, but then you get stuff like Lightning Bending becoming commonplace, and loosing its thematic ties to abuse and how tragically *ruined* the Fire Nation royal family is.
It felt like, where the world was driven before by themes, and explored practical application of bending when it suited those themes, like Earth Bending trains in Ba Sing Se, Korra just dove 100% into exploring the practical and physical existence of these things, and lost the sense that there was a greater importance to thing *beneath* what was physically going on.
The series felt, in a word, *utilitarian* with how it presented ideas and concepts from The Last Airbender.

[hilgigas]

The spirits of Korra seem like a poor understanding of Yokai and Shinto rites of purification. With the little I know of Shinto faith and Kami, they become vengeful if you slight them or allow their shrines to be damaged or dirtied. But at the end of the day they are capricious beings, just as likely to smite you as heal you, like the Kamaitachi it will slice you up then immediately apply salve to mend your wounds before you even notice.

[michaelcheng]

Well, first off, I would like to clarify that "yin" is represented by the black section of the typical Yin-Yang symbol, not the white. Thus, Raava is meant to correlate with the yang, and Vaatu the yin. Which leads into the main reason I actually have with the whole idea of these two: if anything, _Raava_ should have been the one to start the conflict.


As stated by the video, yin and yang are not simply "good" and "evil". For one they don't apply to morality, but the forces of the universe. To illustrate, let's use the sun and the moon. In fact, the words yin-yang are derived from sun and moon! In Chinese, they are written as "阴"(yīn) and "阳"(yáng), derived from the words "月" or "月亮"(yuè or yuè liàng, both "moon"), and 太阳(tài yáng, "sun").

Why the sun and moon are such good examples is because of their relationship with light. The sun generates light, yes, but the moon doesn't "suck in" light, because it's not simply the sun's opposite. It instead takes in the sun's light, and then reflects it. It's not an opposing force to the sun, but instead complements it. And this dynamic also exemplifies one of the most common examples of yin-yang: the active vs. passive.


Raava is coloured white, which means she represents the yang force. She, not Vaatu, should have been the one to take action. She, the embodiment of the powerful and active yang force, should have been the one *doing* something instead of Vaatu, the subdued and passive yin force. This is not to say I agree that there should have been conflict at all, at least the kind shown in Legend of Korra, but it would have adhered more to this real-world philosophy the writers were attempting to adapt into their story.

Raava cannot represent both light and peace, if she was truly meant to serve as a yang force in the world of Avatar. She would be far too active to be considered "peaceful" by human standards. And conversely, Vaatu would never instigate a conflict because he embodies passivity and calmness. And they must constantly keep _each other_ in check, because neither is good in excess. Too much light or too much darkness, either way the world goes blind.